


The Choice He Made

by der_tanzer



Series: Protective Custody [14]
Category: Riptide (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-19
Updated: 2010-05-19
Packaged: 2017-10-09 14:10:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/88305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/der_tanzer/pseuds/der_tanzer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Murray can understand almost anything, if he's just given the chance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Choice He Made

**Author's Note:**

> For those of you keeping track, this is where Requiem for Icarus would fall. I've already dealt with that a couple different ways (actual death and fake death), so there's no need to go there again. So this is where I part company with canon and go where the muse takes me. I hope you come along, and enjoy the ride  
> 

Murray nearly bounced into the room, spun on his toes like a dancer, and kissed Ted right on the mouth with a loud smack that left the lieutenant with a dazed and slightly silly look on his face. It took him a second to recover, and when he had, he turned and slammed the door shut.

"What the hell's got into you, Bozinsky? Doing that in front of the whole neighborhood? Are you insane?"

"The whole neighborhood isn't looking through your front door, darling Teddy."

"Call me that again and the whole neighborhood will hear you scream when I break your arm."

"If you want to hear me scream, there are lots of other things you can do that won't require a trip to the hospital." He grinned and kissed Ted again.

"Stop that. What's going on with you, kid? You get laid on the way over or something?"

"Don't be silly. I'm going to get laid in a few minutes, aren't I? No, I'm happy because Baba, my sister, just called. We hardly ever get to talk, you know, because she's always out of the country, but she's coming to town to spend a few days with me."

"That's good," Quinlan said, his smile fading a bit. "She—she's the tall girl with all the hair, right?"

"Right. I only have the one sister. Oh, Lieutenant, I can't wait for you to get to know her. She's so sweet and funny, just the nicest person in the world, and I just know that once you spend some time with her, you'll fall in love. Well—you know—you'll like her a lot."

"Yeah, well, no offense to you or your sister, but any spare time we have, I'd just as soon spend with you."

"Oh. Well, yes, of course. But I never see her," he said, his voice dropping into a low, pleading tone that Quinlan rarely heard. "It's just for a few days, and I really want you to get to know each other. She—you only met the one time, and you didn't get along that well, but I—I really love you both, and I want you to be friends."

"She knows you're a homo, then?" Ted asked bluntly.

"Um—yes. Baba knows everything about me. She's my sister. We grew up together—we share everything."

"Huh," he said—grunted, really—and went to the kitchen for a beer. Murray followed him, his enthusiasm tempered with uncertainty.

"You have a brother, don't you? You know what it's like."

"I don't know it like you do, I guess." He opened a beer, handed it to Murray, and got another for himself. They sat at the table and Murray couldn't help noticing the lack of intimacy in their positions.

"What do you mean?"

"Me and my brother—we ain't like that. He's a lot younger than me. I was in the fifth or sixth grade when he was born. Our folks worked and I looked after him, but it didn't exactly help us bond. I was more like a father, strict and maybe too demanding. I was the one who taught him to ride a bike and made him his peanut butter and jelly after school, but I was also the one that spanked him and grounded him. I think he was more scared of me than anything. Then I went away to Korea and came home a stranger."

"But you got to know him again, right? I mean, he _is_ your brother."

"I tried. I tried, but I fucked it up. My old man figured out about me and my friends, the guys I was going around with, and he bullied me into getting married, like that would 'fix' me. That's all I was to him, something that was broken and needed fixing. The girl I married—she was nice enough, but I never—I never wanted her." He paused and took a long drink of his beer. "I started drinking too much, it was the only way I could touch her, and when things started heating up in Vietnam, I volunteered to go. I wasn't planning on coming back."

"Oh, Ted."

"Don't you dare pity me, geek-o. You want to hear this or not?"

Murray nodded silently and sipped his beer, all his good feelings gone.

"When I got back from 'Nam, Greg was all grown up. I thought things would be different when he wasn't such a kid. Like maybe we could understand each other. But he didn't. He had the same ideas about queers as our old man, and when he found out, that was the end of it."

"So you don't talk to him at all?"

"Naw, we're still civilized. We talk on the phone sometimes. He tells me about his wife and kids, but he never asks about my life and I never bring it up."

"So he doesn't—he doesn't know about me?"

Quinlan cocked his head and squinted at Murray as if he'd suddenly lapsed into binary code. Murray blushed and sipped his beer.

"I'm sorry. I never thought it was that bad, Lieutenant. I know not everyone is as close as Baba and me. Cody has a brother and a sister that he only sees a couple times a year, but I—I hate to see siblings who don't get along at all. It just seems so—wrong."

"It is wrong," Ted agreed. "But it's what he wants. If I was willing to live the lie, give up men and marry some poor broad so I could make her miserable, he'd probably want to be my brother again. But I can't do it. I can't live like that."

"If I didn't know you as well as I do, I'd be flattered," Murray remarked.

"Hell, you ought to be. If it wasn't for you, I'd be alone and he might like that better. But I guess I care more about you than I do about him."

"I love you, too," Murray smiled and it was Ted's turn to blush.

"Or maybe I just like fucking better than phone calls."

"Everyone does," Murray said mildly. Ted always had to take the pleasure out of any accidental praise. But had he gotten used to it by now. "Does your brother live around here?"

"In LA. But I haven't seen him in person in five or six years."

"Oh. It's funny, we always thought you were alone because you wanted to be. I never thought of you as having to put up with anything you didn't want to."

"Mostly I don't. But you don't know what it's like for people my age. When you were a kid the whole country was doing the free love, if-it-feels-good-do-it thing, and the seventies were even worse. I was alive during World War Two, for Christ's sake. My dad rode a horse to a one-room schoolhouse and got married when he was seventeen. Back then, where I grew up, guys got castrated and thrown off bridges for looking at each other wrong. You kids think it's rough now, getting beat up or losing your job for making out in public, but you don't know. At least it's possible for you to make out in private."

"Well, yes, but it's possible for you now, too," Murray said, trying out a smile. "We could be making out this minute and no one would know. Not your brother or your dad or anyone."

"Yeah, I guess we could," Quinlan smirked, his eyes brightening with sudden arousal. It had been his first thought when Murray danced into the house and kissed him a half-hour ago, but nothing killed desire like talking about his family. Of course, now that he'd been reminded, the idea of taking Murray to bed made everything else pale in comparison. It wasn't just the talented hands and tight little ass that drew him, reluctant as he would be to admit it. He needed to be close to the one heart in the world that was open to him, to lay down his defenses before the one man who could comfort him without making him feel small. It made no sense and he would never understand it, but he felt safe in Murray's arms, as if both his body and his heart were in good hands.

"When's your sister coming to town?" he asked, rising and taking Murray's hand in his.

"Day after tomorrow. So we have plenty of time to do whatever you want before she gets here and you have to share."

"What I want to know is when you got so confident," he growled, dragging Murray out of his chair and toward the bedroom.

"I thought you liked confident. If you prefer something else, I can try. A little fear, maybe?" His voice dropped to mock terror and he begged, "Oh please, Mr. Big Policeman, don't hurt me."

"Knock it off." He slammed the bedroom door and shoved Murray down on the bed.

"Oh, Mr. Policeman, sir," Murray giggled, sitting up and reaching for Quinlan's belt. "Oh, sorry. Mr. _Big_ Policeman."

"I said knock it off." He pushed Murray down again and pinned him, kissing him roughly. His hand kept moving under the high-buttoned shirt, tickling Murray until he tried to squirm away, then pinching his nipple and making him moan. His other hand wound through the unkempt hair, holding on tight so it pulled whenever Murray tried to move.

Other men might have been frightened by this kind of dominance, but Murray found it exciting. He liked feeling the full extent of his lover's passion, the heat and hunger that sometimes made Ted forget to be gentle. He writhed with pleasure as Quinlan undressed him, cooperating just enough so the restraining hand never left his tangled hair. A soft moan of disappointment escaped him when the kiss was finally broken, only to be transformed into louder cries of need as soft lips and sharp teeth traveled down his neck. The warm tongue pressed against the pulse in his throat made it vibrate with softly keening sounds, and drew an answering moan from Ted.

Suddenly he was pulling away, struggling free of his own clothing, and Murray helped with wet kisses wherever skin was newly exposed. Ted kicked his pants off onto the floor and shoved Murray down on his back one more time, accosting him with near-violence and knowing that it was only love that made it possible to share himself so freely. His hands were too hard, his touch bordering on brutal, leaving marks where he meant only to caress, but Murray, thin and fragile, blind without his glasses and wholly vulnerable, arched into him and took what he had to give.

Quinlan gathered the narrow wrists in his right hand and pulled Murray's arms up over his head, digging his left knee into the scant meat of Murray's left thigh and holding him still as he stroked and explored. Murray panted beneath him, twisting his body and gasping for breath, and when Ted gripped his cock, his calloused hand rough and sure, he bucked into it, crying out at the first stab of a cramp in his thigh. But it was forgotten when that heavy hand slid up the length of his shaft, collecting the beads of pre-come that had been inching down toward his belly and rubbing slick circles around the head. Murray tried to thrust, but that warning stab in his thigh stopped him and he lay there, twitching helplessly, as Ted's broad thumb massaged his sensitive slit.

The helpless twitching drove Quinlan wild, the quiver of Murray's lips made him lean down and kiss him again, tasting bitter beer and under it that sweet berry flavor that was all his own. Murray groaned softly, the sound nearly lost under his lover's possessive growl.

Quinlan's hand moved slowly up and down Murray's shaft, pressing and massaging with his fingertips, and finally cradling his swollen sac. Murray tried to move into it and whimpered again at the twinge in his thigh. Then Ted was stroking lower, pressing his come-slick finger to Murray's small opening. Murray thrashed and sobbed, his heart pounding, all of his skin on fire with need. He thrust down onto the blunt finger, his flesh grasping hungrily, too eager to care about the insufficient lube. Quinlan just went on teasing him with the tip of his finger, enough to make him want more, but not quite enough to hurt.

Murray twisted his head away, finally breaking the kiss, and gasped desperately for air. "Ted, _please_. Stop fucking around and _fuck_ me already."

"Is that what you want?" he whispered. "You want me to _fuck_ you?"

"Yes, please. _Now_."

"Now?" he teased, still flirting with Murray's silky passage. "Right this second?"

"I'll die if you don't," Murray groaned, trembling with need. "So it's up to you. You can fuck me nice and hard, or spend the rest of the night beside a dead man."

"Oh, no. I ain't letting you off that easy." He reached for the lube and slicked his fingers properly, slipping one inside as Murray writhed and thrust.

"You ain't letting me off at all," Murray mocked gently.

"Smart-ass," Quinlan grinned and shoved another finger into him. He cried out and ground down onto it at the same time, wrapping his hand around the back of Quinlan's neck and pulling him into a desperate kiss. Lost in that hungry, demanding mouth, he felt only a twinge of disappointment when Ted's fingers disappeared. He gave a small moan and was immediately compensated by the warm weight of his lover's body covering his own. He moved enticingly, pulling his knees up and raising his hips, begging to be entered.

Ted grabbed one skinny calf, slung it over his shoulder, and pushed the head of his cock inside, slow and easy, suddenly refusing the good, solid fucking that Murray had been begging for. Murray tried to force it only to have Ted pull back and withdraw completely.

"No," he whimpered, shaking his head. The thought was unbearable, but the fact undeniable. Ted had pulled this stunt before. "No, please."

"What's wrong, kid? I thought you liked a little torture."

"Not today, please." But there was something in his dark brown eyes that said Quinlan could get away with just about anything he wanted, and what he wanted was to feel the silky smooth heat of Murray's body for as long as possible.

"You want me to stop?" he murmured, gently pressing the plump head of his cock past the clenching muscle once again.

"No. No, Lieutenant, I'm yours. Whatever you want."

"Good. That's my _good_ little geek." He brushed Murray's hair back away from his face, kissed him softly, and pulled out again.

"If I'm so good, why're you stopping?"

"This isn't stopping," he grinned, nudging his way in once more. It was getting easier now. "This is making it last."

"Oh. Oh, _jeez_," Murray gasped, digging his fingernails into Ted's shoulder. He fought to hold still, to let his lover have his way, and was rewarded with just a little more of what he had to have. They established a mild rhythm, Ted giving him just a couple of inches, sliding slow and smooth and withdrawing on every third or fourth stroke. Murray clung to him, spreading himself wider in encouragement, offering more and more, and being gently ignored. It was almost more than he could endure.

"Ted, _Lieutenant_—"

"Shh, baby. Be patient," he whispered, finally allowing Murray to push him just a little deeper.

"Oh, yes," Murray sighed happily. "That's what I need. And you need it, too, don't you?"

"Never mind what I need," he said, sliding in to the hilt, brushing Murray's tender gland and making him sob aloud.

"Oh, _there_," he cried, thrusting hard so that the gentle nudge became a sharp blow. "Ted—God—Ted—_ there, there_…"

"There?" Quinlan asked, pulling back and hitting it again. Murray screamed weakly in confirmation and Ted withdrew.

"No, don't stop. Don't stop, Teddy, please." He only said 'Teddy' when he was desperate, and Quinlan answered by reapplying the lube and sliding into him again.

Now he went deep and stayed there, thrusting hard and sure, striking Murray's gland each time, secretly rejoicing in the other man's screaming, clawing ecstasy. When he slipped his hand between them and grasped Murray's cock, Murray went rigid and came with a frantic shout. Quinlan rode him through it, holding his own orgasm in check, until Murray collapsed in a daze.

"Was that what you needed?" he whispered, and Murray made a small sound that was probably meant to indicate that it was. Then Ted was withdrawing again, crawling down the length of his body, trailing wet kisses over his chest and belly, licking up salty ropes of semen along the way. Murray took a deep breath and propped himself up on his elbows to watch.

"What about you, Ted? What do you need?" he asked, and gasped as Quinlan answered by taking his softening cock in his mouth and sucking gently. Murray lay back and closed his eyes, sighing happily as his lover licked him clean. Then Ted was on top of him again, sliding in ever so slowly, aware that Murray would be feeling raw and over-sensitized after the fierce pounding he'd just received. No one would have guessed, or believed it if told, but Murray was the one who liked sex rough and hard, who wanted to be bitten and spanked and fucked into submission. It was all right with Ted, he was enough of a tough guy to be able to bully on request, but after Murray got what he wanted, it was his turn, and he liked it slow and tender.

Murray flexed beneath him, wrapping his long arms and legs around the stocky body and exposing his throat to soft, nibbling kisses. He didn't come again, but it was sweet and warm and the feel of Ted's orgasm was almost as good as his own.

After, they curled up together under the blankets, Murray's head on his shoulder, petting each other lightly as Quinlan caught his breath.

"Ted," he whispered.

"Hmm?"

"You really care more about me than you do your brother? I mean, this is really worth not having a family?"

"You always want to talk about serious shit after I come my brains out."

"It's the only time I can think slow enough for you to keep up," Murray smiled, and kept smiling even when Ted slapped him on the shoulder. "So tell me the truth. If your brother never speaks to you again, you won't resent me?"

"He doesn't speak to me as it is. And no, I wouldn't trade you even if it meant he'd start. What do I need with some asshole whose approval is dependent on who I sleep with? I didn't write him off when he married a broad with a face like the back end of a truck."

"I'm not sure, but I think there was sort of a compliment in there somewhere."

"If there was, it wasn't for his wife. That babe is fuck ugly."

"All right, I understand. But you're still going to spend some time with Baba and me, right? Because I really want everyone I love to get along."

"Sure, I'll play nice with Sissy. But that doesn't mean she'll want to get along with me."

"No, but I think she will. My family's like that."

"You're one lucky son of a bitch, aren't you?" he teased, running a rough hand through Murray's hair.

"Yes, sir," Murray said softly. "Yes, I am."


End file.
